Haunted
by Dlvvanzor
Summary: Until the day I die, B will never let me go. Oneshot L POV, psychological abuse.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.**

**A/N: Alright. So this fic is about emotional/psychological abuse. I assure you that the people who go through this are not pathetic, nor are they weaker than anyone else- there are people out there who **_**try**_** to do this to people, who do things like this on purpose and know exactly **_**how**_** to do it. Those people need help too, but this is focused on the victim. Please have compassion for the people that go through this. Male, female, gay, straight, old, young, it happens.**

**In this fic, L is B's victim. There is some LxLight.**

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Until the day I die, B will never let me go.

Oh yes, he is dead, I understand that. Kira murdered him in prison. In fact, it was the only moment in which I truly considered giving up the Kira investigation. I was grateful to Kira for killing my own personal demon, _overjoyed_, and in that moment, I 'got it.' Why everyone was so happy to have Kira, how he could have so many supporters and even _worshippers_. Because with B dead, I thought I would finally be free.

Stupid.

How could I ever be free of him? He is B. He is like no one else in the world, and no one else dares be like him. No one has his fascinating, intoxicating energy, his madness.

And no one else does to me what he did.

The moment I met him for the first time, at Wammy's House, I was immediately enraptured. Cliché and sad, yes, but I will not deny what I know to be fact. Though I was only eleven, I desired him. More than anything I had _ever_ desired.

I'd never truly wanted anything before B looked me in the eyes on that first day, and his red eyes glinted with something insane. From that first moment, I was devoted. Whatever we would be to each other (and for him, I'd be anything he wanted) I would give it my all.

Before him, I'd never even really _felt_ strongly about anything. I'd never loved. Even my family, really. I had cried when my parents died, of course, but it did not affect me deeply. I cried a little for them only at their funeral, and I have barely spared them a thought since. I didn't even have any interests outside of solving riddles, puzzles, and mysteries. If I had died, I would have accepted it with a shrug.

Naturally, my indifference to the world let me to believe, even as a child, that I was a heartless, cold person. That the fact that I did not weep for my parents indicated a mental or emotional disorder. That I simply could not care for something or someone.

Now, I laugh at my naivety.

At no point will I ever find the words, in this language or any other, to explain what he did to me. How he could hurt me so badly so many times without ever putting a violent hand on me. How he could tell me things that would make me weep, when death would not. How he could leave me awake all night, staring at my ceiling, terrified that he would do to himself whatever he threatened to on that particular night. He made me miserable, and yet, I loved him so much that the thought of losing him in any way, for any reason, made me want to curl up.

His sharp, sick, dark, cruel mind. His twisted logic. His constant intensity. How he was always on fire, either with passionate anger, passionate happiness, or passionate depression- often within the course of a day, an hour.

I would spend some days like the walking dead, thinking of nothing other than him, worrying about him, my heart breaking when he'd brush past me with tears in his eyes and not explaining, no matter how much I begged him to. Part of me was aware that he was faking it to get my attention. None of me cared. Part of me believed that if I was there every time, he'd eventually tell me what had _truly_ gone wrong, so long ago, and then I would be able to fix it. I made myself believe every lie, when I knew all along exactly how manipulated I was.

Yes, I was aware of it. I knew exactly what he was doing to me- I am not an idiot. How he slowly made himself my world, then slowly started to destroy it. I knew he did not feel for me as I felt- so powerfully!- for him, but I did not care.

People described it as an abusive relationship. I myself described it the same way.

And I didn't care.

Every time he left me, every time I tried to leave him, one of us would go crawling back to the other, and we'd fight until we'd made up. I'd _beg_ for him to come back, or to take me back. He'd _beg_ me to forgive him and take him back, or _beg_ me to come back to him.

No, he never hurt me physically, but I wish he had.

To this day, his every movement, his every word, his every look, his every gesture haunts me. Going about my business, something will suddenly remind me, and it feels like my insides freeze. I become terrified, and the only thing in the world that I want at that moment is a hug. It doesn't matter from whom.

I have many of these associations, but there is one that is the strongest. When it was what I most wanted to hear, when our relationship was at its most manipulative, most twisted, he told me the one and only thing that ever could have made me fight to continue to be near him, even when he tried to push me away (knowing full well I'd come back), the one thing I needed to hear.

He told me he loved me.

After that day, he only said it when he hurt me the worst, although I craved the words constantly. When he was leaving me ("I love you. This is better for you. I just hurt you, all the time."), when he threatened himself ("I'll going to kill myself tonight. Bye, L... I... I love you...")

And now, when I hear the words, I can only hear them in his voice.

I am better now. I eventually managed to escape him, his claws and his chains and the tentacles that he wrapped around me and through me. When I left him for the final time, I never felt so empty. I knew it was better, but I didn't _want_ it. But I did it anyway. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I had to kill a part of myself and feel it slowly rot inside me.

Even now, when I have Light, and I have fought away the pain and most of the memories, there is a little corner that Light cannot touch. Now, when my life is as close to perfect as it ever could be; now, when I am finally able to smile; now, when I can go _days_ without remembering him or thinking about him, _still _I cannot hear those words that are supposed to summarize all that is beautiful in this world and for me quite effectively summarize the opposite. 'I love you.'

It had been a hard thing to explain to my lover, but I eventually was able to make him understand. Now, Light does not say the words: he touches his heart, and then mine. He knows my story.

I wish I could say that that touch- Light's- does for me what Beyond's did. It does not.

Light makes me warm, but BB's touch set me on fire.

His body was nothing to hold a parade over (Light's is, by the way), but for whatever reason, he was able to drive me wild. I remember the way my mind would go blank, the way electricity would flow through my veins, the way my heart would race until I felt ill and the way I had to fight to breathe. The way I would shake- with what emotion, I have never known. His arms around me were unbreakable, even though I was taller, powerful, _alive_. His energy would course into me; his breath on my neck would make me dizzy.

We never kissed. Not even once.

Believe me, I wanted to. Even after taking me (anyone else, and I would have resented being submissive), he would never kiss me on the lips. Everywhere else, yes, but never the place I most wanted it.

I can't begin to imagine how I would have reacted if he _had_ kissed me.

I am better now. I love Light, and I love _the_ light. It's a gentle, pure love. He makes me better simply by not being B. With his support, I'm dealing with the memories.

Light is the one I belong with, but he has never been "The One."

He never will be.

B was. _He_ was the one that brought me to life. If all that had happened to him as a child, all the things that twisted him _hadn't_, if he had been a normal, stable person, we would have been together forever, and nothing would have been able to tear me away.

If I had met Light first, I'd be whole to love him as I should have.

But even if my heart and body belong to Light, my mind, my nightmares, and, ultimately, my _soul_, belong to B. Just the way he wanted it. Like an addiction. Once you are addicted, even when you stop, you always _will_ be addicted.

When I close my eyes as Light lies in my arms, I feel BB. Desire him. Fear him, and it makes me want to shudder. Light even smells a bit like him on some days, and on those days it is impossible for me to get too close.

Until the day I die, B will never let me go.

And I know that, on the final day, it will not be Light, my love, who comes to collect me, nor Watari, my 'father,' nor any angel- it will be B, and he will drag me silently into Hell.


End file.
